Explore almost 150 years of our region’s history by volunteering in a fascinating new project to digitise this newspaper’s archive.

Archant's newspaper archives will be digitised through the Local Recall project. Picture: Archant

Local Recall is a new Google-backed project launched by Archant, publisher of the Eastern Daily Press and its sister papers, which will see news headlines from decades past become available online and through a chatbot.

The ultimate goal is for users to able to ask technology like Amazon’s Alexa things such as: ‘What were the headlines in Norwich the day the Second World War was declared?’ or ‘What else happened on the day Diana died?’

The project is looking for volunteers to help digitise hundreds of thousands of pages of content dating back to 1870, using the newly launched editing suite which has so far checked and enhanced more than 500 articles.

Volunteers are needed to help digitise 150 years of newspaper content in the Archant archive. Picture: Nick Butcher

Volunteers will use the editing suite to search for errors and amend digital copy - all while perusing through the vintage papers and spotting the quirky adverts that lie therein.

Upon completion, the digitised material will be sent to Norwich-based artificial intelligence specialists ubisend, who will give the historic data a voice.